Apologies for the lack of blogging these last couple of weeks (well, it will be a couple of weeks by the time I upload this to the blog), but I’m currently sitting in the shade, enjoying a nice drink, in 29 degrees of sunshine, in France’s Loire Valley. Normally, a family holiday would mean a ban on anything related to computers, strictly enforced by my wife, but the merger between my twin hobbies of photography and computing means that I do need to take a laptop away on holiday with me to at least back up my photos!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that our fantastic holiday cottage (La Sarmenti̬re, in Montsoreau Рbooked via French Country Cottages) had a funky Wanadoo.fr Livebox ADSL router installed.

I’m not sure if the owners intend it to be used by guests (the wireless connection was secured) but I always carry at least on CAT5 Ethernet cable. Except this time. Because I’m not supposed to be using the Internet on holiday. But I neeeeeeed to. Just think of all the tourist information that I could research on the ‘net.